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Amory posted:Foam sounds like a much better idea. Getting second hand sports gear is also a good idea, although I'm in the UK and I don't think there's too much american football style pads around, will check ebay etc though. You may have an easier time finding lacrosse pads, which are somewhat similar.
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Apr 15, 2012 21:26
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THIZZFACE KILLA posted:I just don't see the point of spending a lot of money trying to track down sports padding in the right shape when you can make them yourself for >$5... I agree personally, but I know a lot of people are more confident when they have a pre-fab item to work from. I need to wade into our craft room and clean it up so I can start working on costumes. We're not doing any cons this year, and the craft room has become a dumping ground for stuff we don't feel like sorting. But I want to get started for next year in the worst way. My main obsession right now is historical pieces, and I really want to do Joan of Arc. I've built some armor pieces in the past, but I think a full suit of plate is going to be a challenge, so I want to give myself plenty of time. When I do get started I'll be sure to take photos and post about my progress. The current plan is to use mostly EVA foam. I liked it a lot while I was working on my Judge Hershey last year, and it's cheap and lightweight, which is pretty important when you're talking about possibly trudging around in it all day in Atlanta in August. Also, I'm having a big internal debate. One of the stories about Joan was that she was followed around by clouds of butterflies, which people took as a sign of her divine inspiration. Would it be totally silly to rig something for the costume? Part of me thinks it would look really stupid, and part of me thinks it would be cool to have realistic butterflies suspended above and behind me. This is going to be an ambitious costume for me, since I'm mostly a spandex and capes type of costumer. I've roughed out plans for 22 separate pieces of the armor alone, plus a standard on a pole. I'm debating whether I want to do a surcoat or not. And I have to decide what to wear underneath. If I can get this together, I may ask a friend to let me borrow one of her horses for a photo shoot 
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Apr 17, 2012 17:15
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Rufus En Fuego posted:Are you going to base your design on any particular media (game, movies, paintings, etc.)? Not in particular. I've been doing a lot of reading about her armor, and most of the images of her were painted/designed to reflect the style of their own time rather than anything historically accurate. I'm just going to find solid reference images of armor from her time and then base my design on that, with a little more feminine sculpting since she supposedly had hers made custom to fit a womanly figure. I'm actually kind of glad to read some of the articles I've been finding, because making articulated armor for my hands and such was going to be a pain in the rear end. Turns out that hadn't even been invented during Joan's lifetime! I've gotten to a point in my costuming where I do stuff because I think it's cool, not because I think anyone will "get" it. I had maybe three people recognize my Barbarella costume two years ago, and that was okay. I want to rework that costume eventually, I had to take some shortcuts I didn't like. But if nobody figures out what I'm supposed to be in my Joan, I'm alright with that. DragonCon has enough of a culture of costuming that if I do a good job, people will still like it even if they don't recognize it.
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Apr 17, 2012 19:16
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Definitely! I think I'm going to have to invest in a real dressmaker's form for this project, rather than using tape dummies and such. Especially since I'll probably need to do a fair amount of heat shaping. And no matter how historically inaccurate it is, I am making all of my straps from nylon and using plastic squeeze-release buckles. They'll all be hidden underneath anyway, and I love being able to just hot-glue everything. My husband's Ezio costume has real leather strapping and metal buckles and it is a HUGE pain in the rear end to get him into it. I have no illusions about being able to put this armor on by myself (knights had squires for a reason), but I can certainly streamline the process. I already have a shopping list started 
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Apr 17, 2012 20:10
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Rufus En Fuego posted:You need to post pics of that Ezio costume. A friend of mine has been pestering me to make him one for years. It's the licensed one from Museum Replicas, we didn't build it. I'll post some pics when I get home, though. Posting images from my tablet is a PITA. I'm probably going to make him some replacement blades out of foam or polymer clay (for the throwing knives, not sure if I want to tackle replicating the sword). Even though the ones that came with the costume are dull, he's gotten a lot of crap over carrying them because they're real metal. Not sure what to do about the wrist blade  I actually wore it for a night at D*C last year, although it's kind of comically huge on me. If I ever wear it again I'm definitely using my real half-chaps from polo rather than the ones that came with the costume. They fit better AND they're velcro
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Apr 17, 2012 21:29
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Here you go, the Ezio! This is me wearing it. We had to put a pair of socks inside the gauntlet to get it to stay on my little tiny wrists. The belt was hopelessly enormous, so I left it off.  And my husband:  (He's wearing tennis shoes - this is when the costume first arrived, and he didn't have the shoes lined up yet)  I like the second one He wore the costume to the ren faire and we stopped by the juggling booth. He has juggling bags that look a lot cooler than tennis balls, but he didn't bring them.Also, this is one of my favorite "costumes" of his - he borrowed my Aperture tank top and a friend's jumpsuit (part of a Misfits costume) and carried our Portal gun around, horrifying cute girls in Chell costumes. 
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Apr 19, 2012 02:17
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THIZZFACE KILLA posted:Is that the ren fair in Maryland? It looks insanely familiar. Yep! I had some time to kill today and I was near a Michaels, so I bought a big pack of poster board, some more sponge brushes, and silver paint and rub n buff. I'll probably put in my order from McMaster-Carr sometime in the next couple of weeks. Of course, I can't actually start anything until I clean the craft room 
RazorBunny fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Apr 19, 2012 |
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Apr 19, 2012 20:25
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We never end up with any ren faire photos either, for the same reason. Somewhere there's a picture of me in the Ezio swigging from a hip flask, though...
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Apr 24, 2012 04:07
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Does anybody know of a place that sells elf ear tips that aren't made of latex? I know they can be made from a lot of different materials, but the only ones I've seen for sale are latex. I have a latex allergy, and even the coolest costume isn't worth spending the next few days peeling off chunks of my ears. If all else fails I guess I can try to mold my own with silicone or something. This is just something I want to be able to keep in mind, the costume may never happen, but my friend and I are hoping that after we build my Joan of Arc and her husband's Commander Shepard, we can move on to other armors, and the Elven armor in LOTR is pretty darned cool.
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May 3, 2012 13:55
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McPantserton posted:Osmethae, those look great! My first thought was plumbing parts, either PVC or metal. Sometimes when we're looking for a particular shape we just wander around Lowes until we see something that looks right. Occasionally I've had to try and sidestep questions from a particularly knowledgeable clerk "You know this is for paint and this is for insulation, right?"
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May 3, 2012 16:23
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Rufus En Fuego posted:Dude. I dreamed about your Joan of Arc costume last night. It was gorgeous. Hopefully the reality will live up to your expectations!
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May 3, 2012 17:37
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Rufus En Fuego posted:I'm sure it will! My dream was crazy detailed...I even saw the tiny twists in the wires holding the butterflies aloft. Nice! Maybe I should let you design it for me, since you have it all figured out I think I'm going to do the butterfly rig as something that clips into the inside of the backplate of the cuirass. I'm fairly sure I can build something that will fold flat for transit and then we can rotate the pieces or whatever to get a cloud. I wonder what the finest gauge wire is that could support the butterflies and not fall apart. Finer would be better because the wires themselves wouldn't be visible, but very fine wire has a tendency to get crimps in it and break. God, I still need to clean the craft room. That's going to be a nightmare.
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May 3, 2012 18:33
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I'll probably use store bought, I've seen some fairly realistic ones.
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May 3, 2012 19:32
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Silhouette posted:Click here for silicone ears. Silicone looks way better than latex, and actually behaves almost like actual skin. The price is a bit higher than latex, but you're paying for quality. I actually just ran across that site a few minutes ago! That's pretty cool. I will definitely keep them in mind. Someday I would love to get into silicone casting myself, but it's on a long, LONG list of techniques I eventually want to learn.
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May 4, 2012 19:57
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Silhouette posted:Casting with silicone is just like casting with any other pourable 2 part medium: stir slow, pour high Most of the work I've done involved sculpting rather than casting, so I don't have any experience with the technique involved, but I imagine I can just futz around with it and look at tutorials.
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May 6, 2012 00:36
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So...there's a costume that I have wanted to do for years but never managed to pull together. The actual screen used costume came up for sale today, and I...I bought it.  I don't want to jinx it, because it's not mine until I hear back from them, but I promise as soon as it's a done deal I will post it. I feel a little weird about wearing a screen used costume, but my friends do it all the time (Necromonger armor), so I guess I can deal with it. Before I bought it I actually looked up the measurements of the actress who wore it - it would suck to pay that much money for something and not be able to wear it. Looks like it will be a reasonably good fit! Eeeeeeeeeeee......
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May 9, 2012 01:41
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Red Robin Hood posted:Is your friend selling his Necromonger armor? I saw some for sale recently that was screen used... I don't believe so. They made a lot of armor sets for that movie. I know at least four people who own a full suit. The fact that there were so many also meant they were fairly affordable (between $1300 and $2000 depending on type) and they held up really well after the production because they're fiberglass and rubber.
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May 9, 2012 02:28
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The McMaster-Carr website is acting up, but when it starts behaving I'll be placing an order for $216 worth of materials for armor building (half for me, half for a friend). Woohoo! Still haven't cleaned the craft room. poo poo. Edit: My screen-used costume arrived! It's this outfit. I've been wanting to do Huxley for a while now - I was going to have an all Stallone year, since I did Judge Hershey - but I couldn't find good pants or a pattern to make them myself, and the embroidery was so overwhelming, and I just scrapped the project and gave the fabric I had bought to my sister. I haven't tried it on yet, but I will post photos when I do. I just need to rebuild the shoulder piece, which is missing from the set. I don't think that should be too challenging. So excited! RazorBunny fucked around with this message at 16:38 on May 16, 2012 |
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May 15, 2012 17:45
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    The fit isn't great. Sandra clearly has/had an extremely tiny waist.
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May 21, 2012 01:45
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If you're very concerned about being able to make it, you could buy some cheaper fabric and do a test build. We usually do that if we're making something that we didn't find a pattern for and had to come up with on our own, like the faux leather cape for my husband's Batman costume. We actually wound up using the test build as the liner for the final piece, so it didn't go to waste.
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May 26, 2012 16:38
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My cousin works a lot with fiberglass, and from what he's told me I would suggest a mask, even just a dust mask is better than breathing that poo poo directly into your lungs.
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May 26, 2012 19:28
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Hongkongaton posted:Speaking of socks, We Love Colors is a great site in general, but especially if you're looking for a pair of solid color socks. You'd be amazed at how hard it is to find basic, white knee highs; my friend had a clerk tell her in all seriousness to, "try Hot Topic for quirky things like that." I had kind of a bad experience with them recently I had a pair of flesh-tone tights from them that I loved, because they were great quality and opaque enough to cover my tattoos when I needed to. They finally got old and worn out, so I ordered a couple more pairs. First, the order was delayed several weeks, and they never notified me of the delay - I had to find out by emailing them, and they replied (over a week after I emailed them) saying that there was a problem with that color and they weren't going to ship any until it was resolved. Okay, I guess - it would have been nice to know, since I actually wanted them for something and ended up having to buy another pair elsewhere in the meantime. Then they finally sent the tights out, and they're GREEN. Like, in dim light (like in my bedroom in the early morning) they look fairly flesh-colored, but out in daylight they have a distinctly greenish cast. So much for not sending any out until the dye issue was resolved... I didn't bother trying to get them replaced, so I don't know if the company would have stepped up and helped me out. I was already kind of disgruntled with their delay in replying to my first email.
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Jun 4, 2012 15:19
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Veila posted:I have always heard really good things about we love colors, never bought there personally though. I usually go through sock dreams. They are affordable and super fast shipping. Hopefully my experience was atypical. Sock Dreams is amazing and I have always had a great experience ordering from them - I have a very high threshold for putting stickers on my car, and one of the few that made the list is my Sock Dreams sticker. And now I'm browsing there yet again, and will probably buy a bunch of stuff I don't need thanks to this thread...
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Jun 4, 2012 17:17
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If any Mass Effect fans have $650 burning a hole in their N7 armor, ThinkGeek has a prop M-8 Avenger.
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Jun 8, 2012 14:24
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RazorBunny posted:If any Mass Effect fans have $650 burning a hole in their N7 armor, ThinkGeek has a prop M-8 Avenger. Quoting myself to say one of our friends ended up ordering one. I'll get some pictures for the thread. I think I'm going to ask him if I can borrow it and use it to make a mold, and cast a copy out of something more lightweight. The licensed prop weighs twenty pounds! That's more than twice the weight of the M16 I trained with in ROTC, and that got very heavy by the end of a long day.
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Jun 10, 2012 15:16
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I did my tape dummy over the weekend. The results were imperfect at best - I should have done it in pieces since I intended it to eventually be in pieces, but my husband thought we could do it all at once and, well, it was really uncomfortable. I was freezing cold by the end. I also made the mistake of using something synthetic and too stretchy on the arm area, and the arms were a total bust. The torso and legs turned out okay, though, so it's not a loss. I'll definitely do it a little differently when I help my friend do hers in the next couple of weeks. We did have to cut the legs off separately, but the pelvis is in okay shape for being split down the middle. Now I really have no excuse! Hopefully this upcoming weekend I'll have time to clean up the craft room and get started in earnest.
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Jun 13, 2012 02:50
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wheatpuppy posted:Does anyone in this thread have a recommendation for a good-quality bald cap that I can order online? I plan to try making one using liquid latex, but if I bollix it up I would like to have something to fall back on so I'm not stuck with a crappy Halloween-store version at the last minute. There's a short discussion thread about bald caps over on the RPF if no one here has a recommendation.
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Jun 15, 2012 20:07
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Patterning greaves using poster board is a pain I think I may just drape the foam over the dummy and shape it into place, then cut it from there.
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Jun 23, 2012 18:43
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One trick you can use for the face paint is to apply some regular makeup foundation underneath it. You can also use mineral oil (depending on what kind of makeup it is) to help remove it without being as harsh on your skin as soap and scrubbing.
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Jun 26, 2012 19:15
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I was worried about shaping my cuirass, but it turns out I'm so flat chested that I don't need to sculpt any bewbs in my armor  Has anyone used Rub N Buff on fabric? I have a bunch of leftover gold RNB and the pennant I'm making needs to have a gold border. It's cotton duck canvas, and I'll be coating it with a couple layers of acrylic paint before I try to apply the gold color.
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Jul 13, 2012 21:18
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Cinnamon Bastard posted:A good suggestion for movie style lenses, but I'm aiming for the larger (but not the insanely huge) comic-style eyes. The reflective lenses never come out right. The only Spidey masks I've seen that looked decent had white fabric in the eye openings. Visibility through thin white spandex isn't too bad, believe it or not. Related, I'm thinking about selling off some of my spandex suits. My husband has a very nice classic black Spidey suit (comic style, not film) that he doesn't wear anymore (hard to do Spider-man poses when you have two bad knees), maybe I'll try to convince him to sell it instead of leaving it in a closet forever. If we do decide to sell off any of our suits, I'll definitely let this thread know - they're all great quality, and I'd love them to go to someone who would really appreciate them.
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Jul 18, 2012 12:50
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Cinnamon Bastard posted:The boots are really my concern. Thinking about finding some calf-high waterproof socks and painting them up. Or some black spandex socks and coating them in something. We'll see what crazy bullshit I come up with. Neoprene diving boots/shoes are the go-to for spandex suits, at least in my experience. They have an actual sole on them, which you may not think matters, but a) walking around basically barefoot at a con really sucks and b) spandex is really not sturdy enough to walk around on all day, and it will start to wear through very quickly. The Superhero Costuming Forum is a good resource. I've gotten out of superhero stuff for the most part, so I don't post there anymore, and there has been the usual weird cosplayer drama from time to time, but they have a lot of good ideas. Just be aware that if you post your costume and it looks like rear end, they're probably still going to tell you it looks great. It can be a bit of a hugbox sometimes.
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Jul 18, 2012 14:13
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Reformed Tomboy posted:If you decide to, I hope you post here. I may be interested depending on what you have. They were all made back when I was pretty skinny, but with the exception of my Catwoman suit they're all standard spandex and will accommodate a larger frame (within reason). I'm 5'6"-ish, and the suits are measured for 34A-26-36 or so. Still not sure if I want to part with them. On the one hand, I don't think I'll ever wear any of them again, but at the same time it's hard to let them go. I have a comics-style Catwoman (shiny black PVC) that will probably need new gloves, a plain white suit with a mock turtle neck and stirrup hands (from my Barbarella), a Speedy (Green Arrow's sidekick), a Sinestro Corps suit with metallic gold rather than yellow, and a plain black long-sleeved legless cotton-lycra leotard I wore as part of a Raven costume. The Catwoman is bodysuit, gloves, and separate cowl. The Sinestro Corps is bodysuit, gauntlets, and arm band. The Speedy is bodysuit and a homemade cape. They were all made for me by Loreen of Spandexwear.com (who I 100% recommend for your super suit needs )
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Jul 19, 2012 01:20
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I love looking over my receipts from purchasing costume materials. Industrial supply catalog, hardware store, craft store, office supply store, sporting goods store...
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Jul 19, 2012 19:58
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McPantserton posted:Ha, I throw mine away ASAP so I'll never know just how much my costumes cost. I used to, but then I had something kind of expensive that I decided wouldn't work out and I had a lot of trouble returning it without the receipt.
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Jul 19, 2012 20:09
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McPantserton posted:This is true. I do tend to keep stuff around if I'm not sure about it, which is nice--I ended up returning a piece of wood that cost freaking $14 after I found a different board that was both better and cheaper. Mostly I'm just way, way happier not knowing how much money I spent on craft foam over the course of each summer. You should start buying industrial EVA foam. 1/8", 29"x47" sheets are $12.09, and 1/4" sheets the same size are $24.32. It's not exactly the same as craft foam - it's made of the same substance, but the cells are slightly larger, so it's a little more flexible and a little squishier, and you do have to seal it before painting it because it will absorb paint. But it's so much cheaper than the stuff from the craft store, and those big-rear end sheets are awesome.
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Jul 19, 2012 21:18
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Shoulder bells are a pain in the rear end.
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Jul 20, 2012 17:48
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Red Robin Hood posted:For what? And what are you having troubles with? For my plate armor. I'm just finding it a very difficult shape to coax the EVA foam into. I'll get it eventually, it's just not going as smoothly as some of the other pieces. Edit: I managed to defeat them! The problem was that I had eventually decided to glue the foam directly to the forms I was using, but nothing wanted to adhere to the hard rubber of the form. My husband came to the rescue with his dremel and roughed up the rubber surface, and I was able to use hot glue on it. RazorBunny fucked around with this message at 03:41 on Jul 22, 2012 |
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Jul 20, 2012 20:50
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MajorGravy posted:Are they fully spherical shoulder bells? I'd recommend having a friend to stretch the foam over something nice and round, like a bowling ball, then have you heat gun it into shape. They're done now, so it's kind of moot. The problem with heat shaping is that I bought 1/8" foam, which is so thin and flexible that it doesn't really hold the form you shape it into. In the future I think I'll go back to 1/4". What I wound up doing actually was applying hot glue, then pressing/stretching the foam onto the glue and holding it until the glue set, then moving down a little ways and doing it again until I had the foam spread smooth and fully adhered to the rubber. I wish I had taken some photos before I finished and trimmed them up. I tend to get rolling on a piece and forget that I had intended to do a guide for it
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Jul 22, 2012 05:48
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Triangulum posted:For the shoes you might want to look into surfing booties, they're reeeeally similar in shape to Spidey's though the length might be an issue. I'm not the one looking for them...My husband has black neoprene boots for his Spidey, which is what I recommend upthread Among other things, they're sold for surfing.McPantserton posted:Story of my life. I can't tell you the number of times I've looked like I have some kind of skin disease due to being covered in various paints, glues, etc.
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Jul 23, 2012 16:48
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